By now, you would have heard experts telling us that task switching leads to lower levels of concentration, flow, and efficiency. The time needed for us to “restart” each time we switch from activity A to activity B is actually counterproductive.

“Everything man does today to be efficient, to fill the hour? It does not satisfy. It only makes him hungry to do more. Man wants to own his existence. But no one owns time. When you are measuring life, you are not living it.”

Since time immemorial, man has always been preoccupied with optimising his use of time. He invented innumerable ways to improve efficiency, generate greater returns on time spent, and maximise mileage out of every waking minute.

In life and at work, there are two kinds of people. That is, if you believe psychologists Heidi Grant Halvorson and E. Tory Higgins in their fascinating article in HBR.

The first, promotion-focused people, see their goals as a way to advance forward. They zoom in on the rewards that can be realised when goals are achieved. Eager to “play to win”, they like to dream big and stretch their imaginations in whatever they do.

In the age of social media, life becomes a spectator sport. The only difference is that we’re both the athlete and the audience in this arena.

Meals, shopping trips, holidays, and events become Instagram, Flickr or YouTube moments. Daily murmurs are framed on Facebook while fleeting thoughts (in 140 characters or less) are immortalised on Twitter. The more verbose (like yours truly) would seek the solace of blogs, documenting their thoughts in detail.

Do you know that 40% of our time at work is engaged in selling, even if we’re not in sales? Or that “Bob the Builder” can be a sales trainer?

Sprinkled with discoveries from fields such as behavioural economics, life coaching, and improv acting, To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others by bestselling author Daniel H. Pink scores. Interspersed with charming anecdotes on septuagenarian Fuller Brush salesperson Norman Hall (Pink’s unsung hero who was the last such salesperson), To Sell Is Human is neatly divided into three parts.